Human Comfort
by ldee417
Summary: After the war, it's all they have. Oneshot DHr, written PreHBP


**Title**: Human Comfort

**Author**: luckdragon

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: After the war, it's all they have. (Written Pre-HBP)

**Disclaimer**: They're not mine.

**Author's Note**: See my profile.

After it happens, after it is all over, they all seem frozen. She thought that she would be exuberant. She might run through the streets and shout. She might never stop smiling. She does feel like that at first, but it is so tempered by grief and exhaustion that after a day or two, it is hard to unearth. After Voldemort's death, the fever pitch slows, the adrenalin is siphoned away, and everyone has time to think about those that have fallen. For a while, it seems that everyone really _is_ frozen – frozen in time, feeling nothing but grief, hearing nothing but screams and seeing the blood fall again and again.

But she thaws out sooner than most. This too should have made her happy, but instead she is even more abysmally lonely, seeing her best friends unable to smile and knowing that she is unable to help them. She tries, but Harry just gives her a very wan, very imitation smile, and Ron closes his eyes so that she can't see how hurt that he really is. He probably thinks that it protects her somehow, but it really only makes her feel as though she is being shut out.

She finds that against all odds, she wants to laugh. She wants to try to go an hour, or two, or even an entire day without feeling tears behind her eyes. This is where he steps in, surprisingly. It's just a December afternoon at headquarters, and they are both using the small study room on the second floor. She discovers that she's forgotten to bring a quill. Thinking that she has at least half-trusted him for months now, she hesitantly asks for the loan of a quill. He makes a remark in response, one that she might have expected – but the tone is lighter and not quite as unpleasant as it would have once been. She realizes that he is teasing her. He must want to thaw out too. Suspecting this, she doesn't answer as she might once have, but instead jokes back. It doesn't come naturally at first. They are too used to having to be quiet and solemn. They are too used to only interacting on the basis of icy politeness. Her own laughter sounds harsh and strange against the air that day.

They strike up a friendship of sorts, and it's good to laugh again with a friend. They fall into everyone else's blind spots, chatting in corners.

The first time he kisses her is on New Year's Eve. It's silly, honestly. But it is something new and different that has nothing to do with the last year and a half. That's what's important at the time.

In the midst of all the confused celebrating and mourning, the Order holds a New Year's celebration at its headquarters. It is supposed to be about rebirth and not death (a true _New Year_), but the party-goers still carry a lot of sadness. It is a difficult night. To give them credit, her friends try. They really do.

She arrives feeling superficial because she can't help thinking that it is New Year's Eve and she should have someone to kiss. That's just what you _do_ when it's New Year's Eve and you're finally an adult.

She puts in a bit of time with Harry and Ron, but then she is talking to him, and somehow this topic comes up.

"So, who are you going to kiss at midnight?" she asks. She would never confess that this is a very flirtatious thing to say.

Rather than answering, he says, "Who are _you_ going to kiss at midnight? I'll tell you if you tell me."

"You know it's no one," she admits.

"Well, then, it's a deal," he says without the preamble of proposing any sort of deal. "I'll kiss you at midnight." He lifts her hand and shakes it. "See you then."

With this, he disappears into the crowd. She thinks it's all a joke, but as she's mingling, he keeps shooting her odd, mischievous looks. At about three minutes to midnight, he sidles up to her. He doesn't say anything. She doesn't either. They stand together and watch the crowd. Her stomach feels odd, but she doesn't believe that it's possible that she's feeling flutters.

When there's less than a minute to go and the others start to count down, she spontaneously says, "It has to be a good one. Not just a joke. I'm not wasting my New Year's kiss on that."

He nods without looking at her, smiling just slightly.

Around them, wizards and witches are counting backwards in earnest. When they reach the top of the hour, she turns to him with a challenge on her face, smiles, and says, "Happy New Year!"

He returns the smile and the words, then dips over to kiss her. Despite her request, she still expects him to either peck her or act overly dramatic and entirely false. He does neither; instead, he kisses her very, very nicely indeed. He pulls back just slightly before deepening the pressure again. He tries this same move again, but she pulls away feeling silly and repeats with a small smile, "Happy New Year."

It's that simple.

The next week, they are all back at headquarters. There is just so much work left to be done. The end wasn't really the end. All the loose ends must be tied. It isn't long before they are both in the second-floor study room, alone together again.

"Do you remember when we kissed each other on New Year's Eve?" he asks directly.

"Technically, it was New Year's Day," she answers suspiciously, reddening just a bit. It's just like her to say something like that.

He ignores it. "We were rather good at it."

"Were we?"

"Yes," he says thoughtfully. "Should we do it again, do you think?"

"Why would we do that?" She tries to keep her tone light.

"To keep in practice, of course."

And then they kiss each other in the study room. They keep in practice quite a bit after that.

Neither thinks that they would be a good match, though. He drinks more than she does. She can't stand how sometimes he's simply _frivolous_. They both value their solitude.

But he likes how she smells, and she likes to hear him laugh, and that's enough to keep it going at first. Because if they don't see each other for a while, he starts missing her smell and she starts missing his laugh, and then they have seek each other out again. They won't admit what it is, but they can't deny the fact that they're spending time together. So they have to admit friendship.

She'll see him at headquarters and say something like, "We've been working for hours. Are you hungry? I'm hungry. Let's go grab a bite to eat. Friends eat together sometimes." Or an owl will fly in the window of her flat, carrying a message that says something like, "_If I were in your neighborhood unexpectedly, I think I would stop by. It would be something a friend should do. PS, look out the window._"

Of course, people who are just friends don't kiss as much as they do. She denies it, even though something inside of her is begging her to, just to herself. She looks at him sometimes and comes close, but it has never been said that she isn't stubborn.

Still, it turns out that she can't hold out forever. She finally gives in completely when he asks one night to sleep over ("Just sleep!" he insists). He says he is too tired to get home. She overlooks his thin excuse – Apparation is instantaneous, after all. He sleeps over (just sleeps). When he climbs into the bed, he puts his arms around her and presses his face into her shoulder, and that is when she has to own up to everything. This isn't what friends do. The way she feels when he does that is much more than friendly; it's warm and it's way down deep inside her chest.

And she hasn't thought too much about the war in a long time. She imagines that the friends that she has lost can see her now, and that they are smiling because she is happy.

When he does sleep over (for more than just sleeping), it's already been months, and they're starting to admit it to everyone else, too. It's admission by action, not words. She touches his arm when they talk. He leads her through doors with one hand on the small of her back. It builds until one day they walk hand-in-hand down Diagon Alley, and then it's really all out in the open.

She is surprised by her friends' reactions. She doesn't think that they will be angry any more – they have all been working together, after all – but she expected some sort of surprise on their parts. Harry isn't really very surprised or bothered. Then again, he's been very busy having Ginny touch his arm when they talk and leading her through doors with his hand on the small of her back. She is pleased every time that she sees the new pair with their heads bent together, smiling and whispering. Harry is _smiling_. Ron is still too sad. Half of his family is dead. When he realizes what has happened to her, he is too despondent for surprise. He is happy for her because she is happy, but it all just makes him sadder. She wonders how Ginny can be starting to be happy again, but Ron can't recover.

She realizes one day that it is human comfort. She has human comfort now, and so does Ginny, and so does Harry. She refuses to play matchmaker, and she isn't friends with that many girls anyway, but she starts inviting Ron to any function that she can. He needs people. Friend people.

"Ron, won't you come out to dinner? It will just be Harry and Ginny and Draco and me."

"Thank you, Hermione, but I'd rather just be on my own tonight."

One day, though, out of the blue, he accepts. She can tell that he is only tired of her asking, and is trying to appease her – he doesn't really want to go. It's not a big outing, just dinner at a café. She is bringing Draco, of course, and Harry and Ginny are coming. It's seems like she's asked Ron to come along on a hundred similar outings.

At dinner, they all laugh except Ron, and she realizes that when he ducks his head, he is crying. Everyone pauses, and then Ginny cracks a particularly awful joke. Ron's shoulders shake, and after one horrified minute, she realizes that he is laughing this time. He looks up, and he's laughing even though his face is still wet.

They laugh and talk into the evening. She sees that Ron will be all right again somehow, and the last weight is lifted from her shoulders.

And the unlikely fivesome sits together at a candlelit table looking out at the future.


End file.
